4 Transactors, — Miscellaneovs. 



It is therefore to be regretted that it has come to be so commonly 

 applied to this one particular era of assumed change in the temperature of 

 the whole globe, that several writers use the terms Pre-glacial and Pliocene 

 as synonymous, even when the consideration of theh readers is being 

 directed by them to New Zealand. 



This supposed frigid epoch in the earth's history may well, however, 

 be taken as a fresh starting point by those naturalists who agree with 

 Professor Haeckel, in his proposition that during the " Glacial Epoch 

 between these vast lifeless ice continents there remained only a narrow zone 

 to ivhich the life of the organic world had to ivithdraw."* 



Where this oasis was exactly situated, "the seed of our coming, the seed 

 of food, the seed of man," as the Polynesians describe their Hawaiiki, is not 

 suggested, but it may not unfairly be presumed to have been in that 

 portion of the globe where survivors of its most ancient denizens remain, 

 the certamly imglaciated regions of Australasia. The southern ranges of 

 Australia proper may come to have then- local glacial period by-and-bye. 

 Already heavy snows and avalanches do their work there, and fragments of 

 rock have been carried down now and again from their summits, and 

 deposited as blocs joerches on the sides of the sub-alpine valleys ; but no 

 traces of ancient ice action are to be seen. During comparatively recent 

 times on the contrary, there are many evidences that a more equably warm 

 climate prevailed ; in the extra tropical portion of the great island continent 

 the extremes became more severe, as the extensive remnants of the inland 

 sea gradually dried up. We find the remains of crocodiles in the river 

 alluviums, 800 miles south of the present range of these animals, in 

 juxta-position with those of the great extinct marsupials; the tropical 

 marine fauna of its northern coasts had also a wider range, and lingered 

 long in the gulfs of the South Australian sea ; the set of the currents was 

 probably from north to south, and species unknown on the eastern coast 

 flourished in these mediterranean waters. 



It is an old conservative country this Australia — not given to abrupt 

 changes — but now, like other lands in the southern hemisphere, is 

 gradually rising, especially its central regions. In the Great Australian 

 Bight the ujpheaval is estimated at as ranch as twelve feet in places since 

 1825. Earthquakes are frequent, as in other lands undergoing a similar 

 process, but their effects are little felt on the eastern coast, although 

 evidences of elevation in modern times are found from Cajpe Howe all along 

 the shores far to the north. The shocks usually are not smart enough to 

 produce visible consequences ; not even to shake the trees on the slopes of 



* Hist, of Creation, Vol. I., p. 315. 



